This week is Tuvalu language week and the theme is “Tuvalu tau gana ko tou lagaifakalaga Tuvalu, your language keeps your culture and identity afloat”. Curators from the Pacific Cultures team are highlighting key Tuvalu artefacts and stories from Te Papa’s collections. It is busy at Te Papa right now, with tours for visitors of the… Read more »

This week is Tuvalu language week and the theme is “Tuvalu tau gana ko tou lagaifakalaga Tuvalu, your language keeps your culture and identity afloat”. Over the next few days curators from the Pacific Cultures team will be highlighting key Tuvalu artefacts and stories from Te Papa’s collections. Todays blogpost is from Rachel Yates (Pacific… Read more »

A major of focus of Te Papa’s work is on documenting aspects of Intangible Cultural Heritage including oral histories and traditions, performances, knowledge around crafts, social practices, rituals and customs. Language is an important element of all of these activities. Regular readers of the blog will know that we have already celebrated the Samoan, Tongan… Read more »

Theme: Fakakoloa ‘o Aotearoa ‘aki ‘etau lea mo e hiva faka-Tonga. Enriching Aotearoa with our language and Tongan music. In this final blogpost for Tongan language week we have another guest contribution from the Tongan community. It is written by Kolokesa Mahina-Tuai who was a former Pacific Cultures curator at Te Papa (2004-2008). She is… Read more »

This week is the annual Tongan Language Week in New Zealand (1 – 8 September). The theme for this year is Fakakoloa ‘o Aotearoa ‘aki ‘etau Hiva Fakatonga – Enriching Aotearoa with Tongan Music. As part of this weeks celebrations, Te Papa’s Pacific Cultures curators (and a guest writer or two) will be blogging about artefacts… Read more »

In this fifth and final blogpost of Te Epetoma o te Reo Māori Kuki Airani – Cook Islands Māori Language week, we look at five rare masks from Mangaia. Thank you for following, liking and sharing the blogs this week. In pre-European times, Cook Islanders used tapa to wrap ceremonial objects such as staff gods (wooden staffs carved with figures)… Read more »